


small things

by rizahawkaye



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: (and support and friendship i love my kids), (just a wee bit), Angst, Family, Insecurity, Love, Sibling Love, Sibling Rivalry, sokka tries to waterbend bc baby :(
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 17:31:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21201428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rizahawkaye/pseuds/rizahawkaye
Summary: Hakoda is leaving soon, and his children must come to terms. [Written for the A:TLA zine Tales of the Four Nations.]





	small things

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i applied to write for a really neat zine about a year ago and, well, here is the finished product! we got the go-ahead to post and i was so excited to finally make my first A:TLA piece public. i was tasked with writing for the water tribe, hope y'all enjoy <3

Katara hovered her hand over the deep blue water, considering. They were far from shore and yet her stomach still turned over with uncertainty. But something in the water called to her. It beckoned in a sweet voice; seeped through her pores and settled into her muscles, where her blood picked it up and it coursed through her. Her heart beat with the soft give and take of the ocean, the gentle rocking of her canoe.

She took a deep breath, right through her nose. The cold air stung on the way down but it woke her up, iced her ribs. She exhaled and felt charged. Energy rolled from her center down her forearm into her hand, where she manipulated it until it danced on the tips of her fingers.

The water moved.

Katara turned her wrist. Over, over, over. The water swirled right there, right below her. A thrill struck her like lightning and she turned, breaking her connection with the water, to be sure her brother saw what she had managed to do.

“Katara,” he said, the little vein that ran alongside his carotid pressing hard against his skin, “you know it’s stupid to do your freaky water stuff out in the open.”

Beyond Sokka was an expanse of blue and white. The dusting of snow over the ice puffed up like white smoke. It went up into the sky and disappeared there, coming apart in the wind to drift back down again and dissolve into the water. Katara wondered if she might be able to bend snow too, one day.

“You aren’t the boss of me,” she replied, and returned to her water. She’d lost the connection with it but she dipped her fingers in. They only lasted seconds before she had to retract her hand, the temperature freezing her nerves and the blood that surrounded them.

“Actually,” Sokka squeaked, “I am.”

Katara humphed. Her brother liked to say he was in charge about as often as she liked to say she was a waterbender, but only one of those statements was true. She turned back to the canoe and spread her arms wide, letting the chilly wind ice over the skin of her face, pull her hair from her neck and raise goosebumps over her flesh. She sighed. She felt moisture even in the wind, in every breath she took. The world was made of water.

Sokka stomped around behind her. He had a lead foot even in places where he ought to be tiptoeing and still. His demeanor contrasted the water’s perfectly. Where water was slow and quiet unless touched by an outside force, Sokka was hurried and loud unless calmed by one. Katara could feel his tenuous bond with the water if she concentrated very hard, like running her fingers along the taught laundry line outside her home. It buzzed beneath her being, and through the wood of the canoe she could feel it speaking to her, lapping at the bottom of her feet.

—

Sokka touched the raised muscle of his forearm, angry and swollen. Sparring with his father never amounted to much more than a few bruises and a solid defeat. He paused by a pile of snow and cupped some of it in his hand, then pressed it over his skin. It felt good at first, until it didn’t. He dropped the ball back into its pile, his hand going numb through his glove. Somewhere over his right shoulder he heard his father wrestling with another warrior, someone Sokka’s age or younger, probably, and much more adept at combat.

What would he do if the Fire Nation came now? Sokka could hardly lift a weapon, his arms were small and, as Katara had put it, twiggy. He was barely up to his father’s shoulder in height. He had no weight to him, nothing to throw around or to manipulate…

...Nothing like Katara’s water.

Sokka glanced at the ocean. It sparkled under the sunlight, but it won’t be warmed like the snow. It won’t glisten like the snow. It won’t speak like the snow, crunching under every foot, thudding to the ground off every roof. It’ll creep up to the land, touch the rocks there, maybe a few feet, and then fall silently away, like a seasoned predator. Sokka went to it, pulling his sleeve down over his wounded arm. He crouched on the balls of his feet, elbows on his knees, and pleaded with the water.

Give me something I can use, he thought, desperate, his forearm throbbing. He closed his eyes and tried to remember how Katara did it. She spread her fingers wide, put her palm so close to the water that it was almost touching, wiggled her fingers… No, that’s not right. Sokka peeked out of one eye. The only movement on the water was its own predictable rhythm, a gentle push and pull. Sokka tried again.

And again.

And again.

Finally, on the fourth try, he wrenched himself up from the icy ground and kicked pebbles into the water. The toe of his boot caught snow and he shook it away, suddenly frustrated, suddenly plagued by the threat of tears.

What did it mean that his sister’s gift was the water, and his was not? What was his, anyway? He curled his hands into fists and counted the icy rocks that shot up from the water, their surfaces crystalized and snowy, refined by wind.

He heard someone approach him, but did not turn around to see who. He was afraid they might spy how wet his eyes were.

“I thought you said it was stupid to do freaky stuff with the water,” Katara said. She ventured no farther than his back. He felt her voice at the nape of his neck, a hot spray of breath like she was going to rest her forehead between his shoulder blades.

Sokka shuddered once. “I’m useless, Katara,” he said.

“You’re not useless, Sokka,” Katara told him.

“You’re a waterbender,” Sokka made sure to whisper the word, let it be carried off into the wisps of the wind, “and I can’t even win one stupid match with Dad.”

Silence settled in between them. All they heard was the crackling of fires in the background, the clank of metal, the soft chatter of the village. Then Katara spoke. “I can’t even waterbend for real, Sokka,” she said. “I can make it move but I can’t use it.”

Sokka wondered again about their connections to the water, about why they were so different. About what that meant.

“Dad’s leaving soon,” he said.

Katara grabbed his hand. “Yeah.”

—

Hakoda knew his children. He knew their hearts and he knew their minds; their voices and their favorite colors and the stories they loved to tell.

He took his place between the both of them at the fire. They were turning fish over it, their eyes on the writhing oranges and yellows but their minds somewhere else. He’d be leaving soon and they — his Katara and Sokka — would be made to navigate their blooming selves with a little less guidance than they’d had before. It couldn’t be helped.

The nations were falling to fire and death. Hakoda had promised himself that his children would not live so war-torn as he did. He didn’t want them to find their truths in the midst of Fire Nation rule, and he didn’t want them to go scrambling for their worth in the water or the armory. He wanted them to be children, above all else. To be free.

He cupped the backs of their necks in his hands and tugged them close, tucked under each of his arms. “I’m sorry I left a bruise, Sokka.” He said. He slid his hand over his son’s arm, rubbed his thumb over the discolored skin.

“It’s okay,” Sokka said. His ego sounded as bruised as his arm.

Hakoda wasn’t a perfect father, and he didn’t try to be. Forcing his children to grow early would be frowned upon in simpler, less war-ravaged times, but this was the reality of a world under Fire Nation rule. Hakoda had always known he’d be a soldier, a leader; he’d always known his place. But he could tell that his children did not. He and his wife had done all they could to raise them as comfortably as they could be raised on the ice, in the wind, in a constant state of fight-or-flight.

Hakoda pulled gently on his daughter’s braid, catching her attention. “Hey,” Katara yelped.

“You needn’t base your worth on your abilities,” he said to the both of them. He wanted to reassure them as he never was. He wanted to plant seeds for a life that might bloom differently than his; one that could be more conducive to something akin to peace. He thought on all the times his father had bruised him, scarred him, pushed him. As he’d started doing to Sokka, as he expected to start doing to Katara. His stomach lurched. “Your world does not have to revolve around a fight.”

They looked at him, confused. Their whole lives have been a fight.

“What I’m saying is that I want you to be who you are,” he said. “And if you do that then you will do anything…

“You will do everything.”

**Author's Note:**

> kudos and comments are always appreciated <3


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